I was born in Sweden 1975 to a migrant family from Finland and in a way I have lived in exile all my life. Perhaps a poem will describe it better than explaining words?

Exile is my heritageI was born as a bird
with alien feathers
no metamorphosis
can make me
forget

In 1994, at the age of 19, I discovered Burma (Myanmar), the love of my life. I decided to learn Burmese and to dedicate my life to this country, since I could find no other place that felt more like home. Nowadays I work as an interpreter between Swedish and Burmese/Myanmar for refugees who have left Burma for their new home country, Sweden. My greatest wish is that I could make them feel at home, by talking the same language as they do. Sometimes they call me Ama, elder sister, and it makes me love them all as my own family. I have no right to tell the world about my experiences as an interpreter, since I have the obligation to observe silence. So for their sake, because I wanted to tell their story, I reversed everything and wrote “The Escape to Myanmar”, a story about Swedish refugees who gets asylum in a future Myanmar. It is a story about the pain of exile…

I live with my family in a small Swedish town called Skövde. A beautiful place, and it almost feels like home. I have four daughters, who are half Burmese and half me, and I’m very grateful to have them.